"Group groping," a classroom activity in which discussion units of five to seven students search into a text (play, essay, poem or short story) to illuminate a problem posed by the teacher, is a way of making discussions both teacher-directed and student-centered. After a class has read a work, the teacher provides background information to…

This study is concerned with increasing the rate at which children progress toward more highly differentiated sentence structure. The study recommends sentence-combining practices that will accelerate this progress. The two main purposes of grammar study have been to prevent errors in writing and to present the full range of sentence structures…

One of the major goals of the English class is to give the student the sort of experience that will enable him to increase his power over language. Therefore, it is illogical to try to separate oral and written skills in the classroom. Real discourse in the real world results from a real need. In the typical English class, there is no rhetorical…

A discussion of ways to motivate English students is presented. Five questions are presented and answers given. The questions are: "Do kids really want to be bored?" Why is their background so limited?""How do we motivate students without being hams?""Why do kids have to be entertained in every class?" and "Should we drop all boring English…

The works assigned to a university course in the Harlem Renaissance (HR) are discussed. The HR is defined as a controversial collocation of cultural and aesthetic phenomena. The point is made that the historical backgrounds for the period from Reconstruction to the end of World War I was characterized by many changes which strongly affected black…

Presuming that the innovative process should begin at the point at which a need for change coincides with the means of satisfying that need, the English teacher can update his instructional approach by examining, on the one hand, the student's felt need for articulate expression and a sympathetic listener, and on the other, the current advanced…

Although knowledge of form, structure, and historical periods enrich the study of literature, the English teacher must always keep in mind that the essence of any great work lies in its communication of "peaks" of experience, and that the author's human insights should be transmitted to students. Some principles can aid the teacher in achieving…

After the needs of secondary students were assessed realistically, an English program was designed at Katella High School, Anaheim, California, to provide all students with more challenging, in-depth learning experiences and to equip college-bound students with the kinds of capabilities they will need in college. The program disregards traditional…

Three elementary demonstration-classes at San Fernando Valley State College were taught to perform a variety of sentence-building exercises demanding work with kernel sentences and their transforms. The primary class--a disadvantaged group--learned to manipulate questions, adjectives, and coordinating transformations. The third-fourth grade…

Widespread interest in English instruction and differing opinions about effective curriculums and useful materials indicate a need for a rationally conceived framework for the teaching of English as a unified discipline. The interrelatedness of the divisions of the discipline sustain the unity: language includes the structures and varieties of…

English teachers must teach the reading skills which high school students need to handle informational reading matter and the more thoughtful magazines on the market, as well as the materials every adult encounters on the job or in pursuing a hobby. They must concern themselves with teaching students to read nonfiction prose for the following…

The recent history and present state of linguistics in the English classroom present a dismal prospect. The structural-grammar textbooks of the forties and fifties were inadequate, and the grammars of the sixties, although improved by the influence of Chomsky and his colleagues, are still not as good as they should be. Also of questionable value…

Fifty items selected specifically for teachers of Advanced Placement and Honors English high school students are listed and annotated in this bibliography. The entires are grouped into three categories: "College Entrance Examination Board Publications,""Books and Pamphlets," and articles from "The English Journal,""College Composition and…

The problems of teaching poetry in the elementary classroom are (1) the choice of poems and (2) the way in which the teacher presents the poems. Becuase good poetry can encourage the child's imagination, a teacher should avoid the mediocre "children's poems" generally found in textbooks and should present students with worthwhile poems from other…

For the beginning or general student, dialectology and the history of the English language can both be taught with a common frame of reference provided by certain principles of linguistic change. Related in obvious ways with the history of language but often overlooked in dialectology, these principles are (1) that any living language is certain…